Archive for July, 2018

After successfully completing its original 3-year term as editorial host of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), Michigan State University (MSU) this month began work under a renewed contract for editing the highly ranked journal through 2021.

As of July 1, the coeditors are Tonya Bartell, Dorinda Carter Andrews, Robert Floden, and Gail Richmond, all from MSU. Associate editors include Jeff Bale, University of Toronto, Canada; Christine Cho, Nipissing University, Canada; Corey Drake, MSU; Nathan Jones, Boston University (MA); Emery Petchauer, MSU;and Cinthia Salinas, University of Texas, Austin. The team is further supported by MSU Assistant Editor Maribel Santiago and Graduate Assistants Eliana Castro and Mary Neville.

I am thrilled to announce that AACTE’s contact lists for state policy makers in each state and the District of Columbia have been updated and posted in the AACTE Resource Library (accessible to AACTE members only!). In addition, links to these lists can be found on the AACTE Advocacy Center’s State Advocacy page and on AACTE’s State Policy and Legislation page.

These documents are an AACTE member benefit to support you in your state-level advocacy work. Use them to find key state policy makers–for example, legislators for authorizing and appropriating education funds, state department of education contacts, and even your governor’s education staffer.

East Carolina University (ECU) has been named the new institutional home of the North Carolina New Teacher Support Program (NC NTSP), which provides university-based professional development and on-site instructional coaching for new teachers throughout the state.

The NC NTSP aims to boost the effectiveness and reduce attrition among early-career teachers in order to raise student achievement, especially in historically disadvantaged and underserved school districts.

Originally launched with federal Race to the Top grant funds in 2012, the program now operates with funding from the state legislature, which allows districts to enroll teachers in the program at a subsidized rate. Nine universities in the UNC System provide the instructional support in partnership with 53 school districts around the state.

Have you seen the JTE Insider blog managed by the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team at Michigan State University? This blog is available to the public, and AACTE members have free access to the articles themselves in the full JTE archives online–just log in with your AACTE profile here.

Chezare Warren, assistant professor at Michigan State University, received AACTE’s Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2014 for his study Empathic Interaction: White Female Teachers and Their Black Male Students, which was completed in 2012 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Reminder: AACTE is seeking submissions for the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award now through August 20.)

Public opinion on arming teachers is divided, and confidence in schools’ security against attacks is waning. Two thirds of parents with children in public school said they would rather not have their child in a classroom with an armed teacher; that number jumps to 80% of Black and Hispanic parents. But when asked if they support arming teachers who are also provided 80 hours of intensive training and support, parents are evenly split.

As the focus of Congress turns toward accumulating “wins” for members to use to get re-elected, the appropriations process has taken an unexpected turn – work is getting done.

As I have shared with AACTE members in recent Federal Update webinars, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL, chair of appropriations in the U.S. Senate) and Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ, chair of appropriations in the U.S. House of Representatives) committed to seeing the appropriations process return to “normal” this year–and that commitment is coming to fruition. By the end of June, the Senate had moved all 12 appropriations bills through subcommittee and full committee, and the House is on track to do so by the August recess.

A new study of The Wallace Foundation’s Principal Supervisor Initiative (PSI) identifies successful ways for principal supervisors’ jobs to be refocused to more effectively support principals’ instructional leadership.

Typically, principal supervisors in large, urban districts are assigned to oversee too many principals, in addition to numerous district tasks, to be able to have an impact on principals’ effectiveness as educational leaders. The PSI aimed to improve this situation by addressing five core components: (a) revising supervisors’ job description to focus on instructional leadership, (b) reducing the number of principals in each supervisor’s case load, (c) developing supervisors’ capacity so support principals, (d) developing systems to identify and train new supervisors, and (e) strengthening central office structures to support and sustain these changes.

In this week’s featured videos in the Research-to-Practice Spotlight Series, participants in the education partnerships of California State University, Long Beach, discuss the hurdles they’ve faced, supports they’ve implemented, and advice to others interested in starting a similar program.